"You won't find the souls of Schlaraffenland here," Hades told Rumplestiltskin with a smirk. "I'm afraid they've all gone on to a worse place..."

Rumplestiltskin gritted his teeth. He had suspected as much, but it was still a blow to hear it confirmed by the god of the Underworld.

"But that doesn't mean there's no one here who remembers you." Hades chuckled, eyes gleaming. "In fact, I've invited one of your old 'friends' to my palace. It's time you dropped by to say hello..." Hades snapped his fingers.

Divine magic whisked Rumplestiltskin out of the Underworld town and into what Hades had called his palace. It was more of a glorified cavern, reminiscent of the Black Fairy's lair, thought Rumplestiltskin. Diffuse globes of light hung from the upper reaches, while the river that flowed sluggishly through the palace glowed a sickly, swirling green from the souls trapped in the water. A majestic throne dominated the central island. Hades seated himself upon it, then gestured at the armchair that materialized across from him.

"Have a seat, Rumple."

Rumplestiltskin sat stiffly. He couldn't afford to let the god get under his skin. He had felt the strength of Hades' magic yanking him here — more power than he could match. "What do you want?"

"A small point of law," Hades said conversationally. "As it turns out, killing someone does not nullify any contracts you may have had with them..." He turned his head. "Isn't that right, Master Fendrake?"

Rumplestiltskin's blood ran cold. No, it couldn't be. He remembered the healer all too well. At a time when Rumplestiltskin had been a lame, penniless spinner, Fendrake had saved Baelfire from a deadly snakebite in return for Rumplestiltskin's secondborn, a child he had never thought to have — not with the wife who had nothing but contempt for him. Later, with Cora, the Dark One's hope had re-awakened, and he had killed the healer to avoid that debt ever coming due. He should have known better.

A man stepped out of the shadows from behind the throne. He gazed silently at Rumplestiltskin. He was taller and broader than the Dark One who had murdered him, his face unmistakeable with its distinctive blue tattoos.

Hades grinned. A flick of his wrist filled his hand with a rolled-up scroll. "Now, I made a deal of my own with our esteemed friend. In return for this contract, he gets to move on to a happier place." He nodded to the dead healer.

Fendrake nodded back, just the tiniest motion of his head and eyes. Then he faded in a halo of white light, and was gone.

Hades tapped the scroll against the arm of his throne. "Shall I read it to you? Remind you of its contents?"

Rumplestiltskin glared. He knew the contents all too well, but Hades flipped the scroll open and with the words right in front of him, Rumplestiltskin couldn't help but read them, confirming the leverage he had let fall into the god's hands. That was his signature at the bottom.

"Now, I hear on the grapevine that Mrs. Dark One is in a delicate state..."

Rumplestiltskin tried to keep the terror off his face. To little avail, judging by the glee in the god's voice.

"And currently taking a tour of the lands of the dead. My domain." Hades rolled up the scroll again and tied it. "Now, babies are not my usual stock in trade, unlike some people, but a child of the Dark One would no doubt make a superior demon..."

No! Rumplestiltskin lunged out of his chair, his hand shooting a bolt of magic towards the scroll. He would never...

Hades swatted the spell away with a wave of his hand, sending Rumplestiltskin tumbling to the floor. "A bit of dignity, please."

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He clambered to his feet. "What do you want in return for that contract? You must want something from me, or why bother with all this rigmarole?"

Hades nodded. "A full-grown Dark One at my service is more useful in the moment than an unborn baby, whatever its potential. I'm willing to rip up this pesky little contract, in return for your assistance..."

"No," whispered Rumplestiltskin, but there was only defeat behind the denial. He couldn't refuse, not at that price.

"Then I guess I'll cash in the debt and take my chances with the baby—"

"No!" Rumplestiltskin bowed his head. "I..."

"You're working for me, now."

Rumplestiltskin nodded. He wouldn't waste his resources on a pointless battle. Better to bide his time and let Hades have his victory now. Whatever the god wanted, it was also a potential weakness to be exploited.

Hades complained about his brother. Everyone knew that Zeus had banished Hades to the Underworld but that was about to change, so he said. The portents were in his favor. Portents that anyone could read. "And now that sneaky bastard's smuggled his agents down here, hoping to supplant me. It's something of a race to see who gets the chop first, a race I intend to win."

"And where do I come in?" Rumplestiltskin asked as neutrally as he could.

"You and your predecessors will take out the competition for me. The mouse thinks he's being subtle, but he's no match for the Dark Squad." The mouse. Hades meant the Apprentice. "Zeus sent him down here alone, an oversight that will prove his downfall. I trust you can arrange that for me..."

"I have the power to summon their shades," Rumplestiltskin conceded, "but they have no reason to obey me."

"Well, you just have to make them the right offer." Hades stood up and moved to the sideboard, an incongruous antique from who knew what realm, taking a bottle from the cabinet and pouring into the two glass tumblers that were just suddenly there. He handed one of the tumblers to Rumplestiltskin, then sipped from his own. "What is it that they all want, hmm?"

Rumplestiltskin, who had fragments of all them lodged inside his head, didn't need to consult those memories to answer, "To walk the lands of the living again, there to reign supreme." He shook his head. "One Dark One is quite enough. A full score of them hardly bears thinking about."

"It would give my brother something to think about, and keep his pet heroes busy for a long time." Hades smirked.

"They're dead. It can't happen, unless..."

"Unless I open the way for them. After that, it's simply a matter of a life for a life, and you all know how to mark one of the living for the ferryman." Hades lifted his drink to his lips in a mock salute. "Here's to the Dark Ones and their imminent ascension!"

"I see." Rumplestiltskin risked a sip from his own glass. Something strong and dark, a whiff of the river of hate. "Some would call it a minor apocalypse..."

It was a clear dereliction of duty. Hades was meant to guard the gates of the Underworld against the monsters, not invite them to saunter through. It was also a calculated risk. Rumplestiltskin knew there were worse, more powerful creatures locked in Tartarus. Hades was gambling that the Dark Ones could still be contained. That they wanted more from the world than pure destruction.

Rumplestiltskin had become the Dark One in order to save his son and the other children threatened by the Ogres War. He had eventually gained some measure of restraint over his own darker impulses. He wasn't sure how many of the others would even care to try.

He wasn't sure that Hades couldn't summon them directly. The god seemed to be taunting him with the contract. Just as the Dark One could recognize a desperate soul, the crippled spinner could recognize a bully. He tested his theory. "You don't need me for that. You are the god of this realm. No one can hide from you here forever, not even a Dark One..."

Hades wrinkled his nose, sitting down in his throne again and swishing the liquid around in his glass. "I have better things to do than chase after the little scamps."

"Do you?" When Hades didn't answer, Rumplestiltskin sighed. "I won't be your hunting dog."

The contract made another appearance. "I have a piece of paper here that says differently."

Rumplestiltskin ground his teeth. He had no love for the Apprentice, but disliked the idea of being a pawn even more. But he was too weak to protest — his priority right now had to be the safety of his family. "Very well. I'll relay your... generous... offer to them."

Zoso was the only one to refuse. Standing on the end of the dock in sight of the ferryman's boat that had been promised, he stayed unmoving when all the other Dark Ones swore their oaths to Hades with their hands on the long oar to bear witness. He remained behind when the others dispersed again into the city to fulfill their mission.

Rumplestiltskin wasn't surprised. The man had been a slave before and would never submit to the yoke again. He had orchestrated his own death to free himself. That knowledge lodged inside Rumplestiltskin's chest. Now he tore it free and offered it back to Zoso, the fragment of his soul that had been taken by the Darkness.

Zoso accepted it with a smile that was more than half grimace. "Even after all these years, you're still so quick to make a foolish deal?"

"It was worth it, to save my son."

"Same as ever, then," Zoso sighed.

"I do wonder about you, dearie." Rumplestiltskin eyed Zoso speculatively. "You don't want to return to the land of the living. Well, you have all of your soul back now..."

"Aye, but at what price?"

Rumplestiltskin shrugged. "It's on the house. At the end of the day, you were my benefactor, and I took your life. No matter your intent, no matter what price I had to pay for it — it was my hand on the knife and I made a choice."

Zoso snorted. "Very generous."

Rumplestiltskin gestured. "Feel free to go..." He remembered the way Nimue and Merlin had faded, crossing some threshold invisible to the living. "To whatever ultimate fate awaits you."

Zoso lifted a hand, as if testing the wind. "No... I think not."

Rumplestiltskin was surprised. Hadn't Zoso wanted an ending? Why would he refuse it now? "What keeps you from moving on? Do you pine for a long-lost love?"

"Hardly." Zoso shook his head. "I've said my farewells to the ones I missed and spat upon the graves of the ones who betrayed me — long may they burn for it."

"Then...?"

Zoso chuckled. "You say it was your choice to kill me. On the other hand, it was my choice to pass the burden to you, out of all the desperate souls in the Frontlands. Perhaps I've become invested in your fate..."

Rumplestiltskin tensed. "Then... you know what I need..."

"Your wife and child are in Tartarus."

"Do you know the way there?"

Zoso pointed at the water. "The current will take you there. How well can you swim, spinner?"

"I wouldn't arrive in any state to help anyone!" Rumplestiltskin snapped, unamused by Zoso's grim jest. He took a deep breath. The ferryman's boat was bound to the living lands (and it would be foolhardy to steal it from under Hades' nose) but there were other boats, ones that only existed for the dead. "Perhaps..."

"Perhaps it's time to put a tighter leash on you," said Hades. The god wasn't there, and then he was. No telling how much he had heard. His gaze moved to Zoso.

Zoso inclined his head. "Lord Hades."

Hades waved a hand in dismissal, his attention back on Rumplestiltskin as if the dead Dark One wasn't worth another thought. "Hmm."

"I did as you asked," said Rumplestiltskin softly. "We had an agreement. You are a god of your word, are you not?"

"But it would be a shame to dissolve our partnership prematurely." There was a vicious gleam in the god's eye that Rumplestiltskin didn't care for.

"What do you want?" He was past being diplomatic, but as long as Hades held the contract, Rumplestiltskin didn't dare cross into outright rebellion.

The answer, it seemed, was Rumplestiltskin's humiliation. Hades took him to a hovel even more shabby and filthy than the one from his own memories. Water dripped from a leaky roof onto a dirt floor. With a wave of his hand, the god dressed the Dark One in the threadbare rags of his most desperate days as a peasant, then sat him at a spinning wheel with a basket of straw.

"It's good to get in touch with one's roots, I find," Hades smirked. "Now, Rumplestiltskin is famous for one particular skill. Let's see..." He ran a finger down the side of his tunic, a simple white garment in an archaic style. "A cloak of gold thread will complement this nicely when I ascend to the throne of Olympus."

Rumplestiltskin grunted noncommittally. His ankle throbbed, returned to a state he had almost forgotten, but that the god took delight in, divine magic trumping the darkness in keeping him crippled. He looked down at his hands and saw smooth human skin. So. Even that mask was stripped away from him, emphasizing his mortal weakness in the god's domain.

Hades chuckled. "Get to it! I want to see that little wheel spinning away..."

Rumplestiltskin had little choice but to comply. And even when Hades vanished from the hovel, he still felt the prickle of hostile eyes watching him. The basket never emptied and the spool of gold thread never filled completely. Rain pattered relentlessly on the roof, falling from an unnatural sky to drip through the holes to splatter on the floor before draining away in little rivulets to who knew where. As his hands worked, his thoughts wandered.

Hades held all of the power here. Who in his own domain could oppose him? The Apprentice? Depending on what gifts Zeus might have bestowed upon him, perhaps. But he wouldn't willingly use them in the aid of the Dark One. A distraction, perhaps. No, Hades must have some weakness. After all these years of exile, what made him think he could break free now? What had changed? There had to be some new element. The question was, could Rumplestiltskin contrive to disrupt whatever it was?

That question was answered by an unexpected visitor.

The hovel had no proper door, only a patched-up cloth to hang across the entrance. A woman pushed the drapery aside and stepped inside. "Hello, Rumple."

He looked up with a shock of recognition at that voice, and saw a face he had never expected to see here. "Cora!"

"How much longer are you planning to skulk on this godsforsaken rock?" demanded Gaston, practically breathing down the Apprentice's neck as the latter crouched down to etch a complex Elvish spell in said rock.

"We're not skulking." The Apprentice barely bit back a you buffoon. The dead hunter was doing nothing for his concentration. Satisfied that it was inscribed correctly, he laid a palm over the sigils and channeled a careful measure of magical energy into the spell. He straightened, his knees and back protesting the effort, and he envied the buffoon his hale and young-seeming form. "And forsaken by the gods, or at least one god in particular, is the point."

Their current base of operations was a chthonic inselberg, an eruption of the primordial burning rock of the sunless lands that had long since cooled, then worn away until only this remnant remained, an isolated hill rising starkly from the Underworld plain. It was older than the gods, and stubbornly resisted the divine subjugation that Hades imposed on most of the realm. That made it the easiest point for the Apprentice to put a foot in the door, prying the hill away from the god and marking it with his own name.

Gaston sniffed in disdain and scuffed a foot on the ground, testing the spell. "And this magic of yours?"

"It will conceal us from Hades and his minions while we gather our forces. It protects us from divination spells and summonings," the Apprentice explained. "You were a hunter. You must be familiar with the concept of a hunting blind."

"Bah. Skulking!" Gaston surveyed the hill, then the surrounding plain. "A pity we couldn't take some of the hounds with us."

The Apprentice sighed. "They are bred to chase lost souls for the entertainment of Hades and his demons. Not a seemly sport for our new regime to indulge in, when we are meant to be bringing light to this dark realm."

Gaston shrugged. "Give me the chance, and I could set them on our enemies. I've always had a way with dogs, and I am more now than I once was..." He raised a fist, magic sparking from his skin. "See? Isn't that why I was chosen?"

"Indeed." The man was insufferable, but he made a handsome figurehead. Someone to draw fire while the Apprentice kept order from behind the throne. He had wanted recognition from Zeus, not a kingdom in his own right, but of course the Skyfather wouldn't understand that. Zeus and his brother were too straightforwardly ambitious, but he was the Apprentice, never the Master. But he was where he was, and he would have to do his best with the task laid upon him. As long as Hades was removed from power, Zeus wouldn't complain too much.

Hades wasn't stupid. Or blind. The god of the Underworld must have more than an inkling of the intrusion by now, and no doubt had his own spies on Olympus. The Apprentice expected an attack at any moment, hence the layers of concealment he was even now completing around their barren hill.

"Well, any power must be exercised to be effective. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect," the Apprentice said primly. He nodded at the flat crown of the hill. "A fine place for your future palace, don't you think?"

Gaston eyed it with a scowl. "I'm hardly an architect."

"Merely an untapped talent, my dear fellow. If you set your mind to it, you should be able to use your gifts to conjure up..." The Apprentice paused, then decided, "...a modest hunting lodge, then? And if your first efforts prove less than satisfactory, why, you need only will it back into the void and try again." He glanced at the sky. "The weather in the Underworld can be fickle, but no doubt you know that already..."

"I wouldn't mind having a roof over our heads," Gaston conceded grudgingly. "But I would have thought that kind of magic to be more your bag, old man."

"Think of it as a form of training." The Apprentice smiled at the look on Gaston's face. "If you object so much to 'skulking', as you put it, then your only alternative is to challenge Hades to a duel and show his demons that you are worthier of the throne than he..."

Gaston brightened. "Now you're talking."

"But as a god, he doesn't fight with fists and steel only," the Apprentice reminded him. "That means you need to hone your own magical skills or the duel will be over before it even starts... unless he decides to toy with you first, of course."

"No one toys with Gaston," the shade growled.

"Well, then." To the Apprentice's hidden amusement, Gaston actually climbed to the top of the hill and made crude, laughable efforts at conjuring some kind of cottage into existence. It was some consolation for the gnawing envy (buried forcibly under the amusement) that that buffoon was gifted so conveniently with divine powers when he, the grandson of a god (bastard-born or not) had had to scrabble and scrape for it for centuries.

The Apprentice turned away before his resentment could show and continued laying in another layer of protective spells.

Spells that failed to account for more mundane means of detecting them. It was only later that the Apprentice remembered that pigs had a keen sense of smell, as good or better than any hound, and when coupled with human intelligence—

—meant that the Apprentice was caught completely off-guard when the fire-breathing boar barreled into visibility right at the edge of the protection spell and charged right through it.

The Apprentice cried out in alarm and scrambled out of the way, barely managing to teleport himself to the top of the hill before he was overrun.

"What the hell?" Gaston whirled around to face him. Behind him, ramshackle walls collapsed to the ground.

"We're under attack," gasped the Apprentice, wishing he'd been more sparing with the protection spells earlier. He should have rationed out his magic better, not been overconfident about their concealment.

Then flames shot towards them, followed by the creature the Apprentice belatedly realized must the shade of— "Gorgon the Invincible!" He threw a net of magic at it, but it was already fraying. "I can't hold him for long..."

Gaston scoffed. "Nothing's invincible." He inhaled deeply, stretching out his arm. A heavy boar spear materialized in his hand. "I've slain plenty of wild boars in my time..."

"It's not just any boar. That's a bandersnatch!" panted the Apprentice, dodging away again as the monster shook free of the spell. "A former Dark One. One of the more bloodthirsty ones..."

But Gaston himself was no stranger to bloodshed. He wielded the spear with the augmented strength of a god or demigod. Soon the shade of Gorgon was pinned squealing to the rock.

The Apprentice had summoned the Sorcerer's Hat by then. "In you go!" The vortex of magic engulfed Gorgon, and nearly Gaston before he leaped hastily out of the way.

Then it snapped shut and folded itself back into its box.

The Apprentice looked at Gaston.

"Nothing like a bit of action to get the blood pumping, eh?" Gaston slapped the Apprentice heartily on the shoulder. "Who's next?"

The Apprentice collected the hat box and sat down on a collapsed wall. "Let's hope we have a chance to catch our breaths before we face the next onslaught." He waved a hand feebly. "You should get in some more practice. The others may not be so foolhardy as poor Gorgon..."

Gaston looked downright eager for another fight. The Apprentice sighed inwardly. Gorgon wasn't the only foolhardy one. Not that there was any use in saying so aloud. Irritating though it was, Gaston was the only person available both dimwitted enough for the Apprentice to guide ('control' left a bad taste in his mouth) and powerful enough to possibly defeat Hades. The Apprentice just had to keep him in one piece until that happened.

Simple.